bierce

I'm not keen on adding a 60 year old who has been away from the college game but 20 years, but there are only 20 coaches in NBA history with more wins and a higher winning percentage than Snyder, factoring games as of last night. Hard to call that nothing special.

Golding has one thing on his resume that Terry doesn't, and that is building a program from D II and getting it into the tournament 2 of 3 years, maybe 3 straight were it not for the 2020 tournament being canceled, but I don't think it was getting past SFA in 2020. He did quite the excellent job at ACU. However, Golding's biggest drawback has been the zero improvement in the UTEP program over a four year period. At 49 years old and having made no progress with a mid-major nowhere for 4 years, he should be miles behind Wade, Murray, McCollum, Pitino, and even Olen and Odom, as a candidate to move up from the mid-majors or an assistant's job this spring.

Or make things nearly impossible for a team playing at the level Texas is playing. It would have to win 4 in a row, which would mean winning @ Miss State, beating OU again, then winning two games in the SEC tournament in Nashville, probably against Georgia/Vandy (maybe Arky) then against Tennessee/Missouri. Pomeroy would give that about a 3 percent chance of happening.

We were on just 13 of 38 brackets that updated yesterday plus CBS (updated this morning). We still appear in the field according to the matrix, but only because other brackets haven't updated. As soon as they do, we'll fall behind Indiana Georgia, and tOSU.

Correction: As more brackets have updated this morning, Texas is appearing on 2 of the first 10 I checked. Not really surprising at this point despite the narrowness of the loss. Other bubble teams won and moved up. We didn't and moved down.

Vandy, tOSU, SMU, Indiana, Boise State, and Arkansas (alas) won Texas (alas), WF, and OU lost. Texas appearing on no more than 1/2 of the brackets updating this morning, and generally as one of the last 2 in the field when it does appear. Texas-Georgia winner might be in the field. Loser will drop out again. BYU won, but I didn't include it as a bubble game, since BYU had climbed to the 8/9 line after torching Kansas and winning @ Arizona. No games of interests tonight or tomorrow unless you are of the opinion someone like UC San Diego, VCU, or Drake can look up at large bids by winning out regular season, creating what I call fiddler crab conferences. Almost entire bubble playing Saturday, including double bubble game Texas hosting Georgia.

And LaSalle Thompson.

I suspect it isn't looking too sharp. Part of the problem with the current team is misfit-toyitis, and if he really is the recruiting coordinator as part of his general managing role, then he has to take some of the responsibility for this. But if we are moving on from Terry, and I suspect it is likely that we will, then I think Haith and Ogden will also be shown the door, and the Rick Barnes assistant era will come to an end at Texas.

Dumb. We'll replace him at the end of the year in all likelihood, but firing him now just means Frank Haith becomes interim coach, and he's the guy who is already directing the offense, so what have you gained? Nothing. Either that, or you bring in an outsider, and nearly everybody quits, and we wind up playing walk-ons for the rest of the year. And there probably isn't a coach out there who is thinking of moving up who isn't waiting to see what happens in Austin before agreeing to a new job, so there is no reason to pull the plug until the season is over.

Because they are

That's what it looked like. Was called a flagrant. Not a play on the ball. At least not the one that is the normal subject of a basketball play.

Nothing bigger than Texas @ Arkansas today as far as the bubble goes. Winner stays in, loser likely drops out but could climb back in with a win in its next game. Vandy @ A&M Penn St @ Indiana OU hosts Kentucky WF hosts Virginia Boise State hosts Utah State tOSU @ USC, after which tOSU has a home game against Nebraska and a road game against Indiana, so two chances to get a win and knock down or out the competition there SMU @ Cal. I only put SMU here because 10 of the 106 brackets updated since SMU's home loss to Clemson still include SMU for some absolutely unfathomable reason.

WVU won by a bunch. Rather than try to climb back into contention for a bid, TCU laid two eggs on the road. Was always a long shot, anyway. WVU looks to be in very good position now with so many bubble teams dropping games over the last 9 days. New Mexico played an extremely sloppy first half and had problems with transition defense after committing turnovers. I was particularly amused by the guy who gave us a steal on a lazy pass between midcourt and the arc, chased the Aztec on the breakaway, and tried to depants him while he was going up for a dunk. SDSU 73-UNM 65. UNM had a chance to wrap up the conference title on this road trip to Boise State and San Diego State, but now it needs to win @ Nevada to avoid worrying about falling behind Utah State. It swept Utah State, so it has the tiebreaker there.

McCaffery's team just took another nuking. Iowa may try to get him first.

Florida made all 3 ft, Georgia got it in, was fouled, made a pair, and Florida missed a bunny. Georgia by 5 and now has three great q1 wins--St. John's (neutral) and Kentucky and Florida at home. Will be coming to Austin looking to move back into the field and probably needs to win 2 of its next 3 to clinch a bid. Newell will be really hard for our bigs to handle. I still say we missed more by losing out on him than Toppin, but I suppose it was always likely he was going to stay home.

Wow. Georgia fouled a three point shooter letting it fly from 30 feet!

Newell owned the paint in the final minute to carry Georgia to a 86-80 lead with 10 seconds left. Georgia blew a 25 point lead in the first half and let Florida briefly take the lead with about a minute to go. Cincy beat Baylor 69-67. Pitt trails Ga Tech by 4 with 18 seconds to go. Will be final nail for Pitt.

Three P4 hires there because Bama poached from UDub who poached from Arizona. But I don't think we'll be poaching from an SEC or Big Ten program with huge money to turn around and poach a P5 coach, and with the greater number of basketball programs, there is always a bigger pool of rising coaches.

Jordan was making a joke about someone's earlier post calling Mississippi an average team after we lost a one possession game in Oxford.

Silliness to think we would cause some avalanche of movement in P5 schools by firing Terry. We would affect at most one other P5 school. Even if we steal a Miller or Otzelberger from Xavier or ISU, it isn't like they would poach from a third P5 school. They'd probably have the smarts to hire Wade, McCollum, Pitino, Murray, or some other up and comer and wind up doing very well for themselves.

We already have openings at Florida State, Indiana, Utah, and Miami. Ron Sanchez's brief flirtation with support after winning a couple of games against tournament outsiders has already evaporated. The only thing protecting Mike Young at Va Tech is athletic department finances. Syracuse may give the lie to the notion that a coach has to get three full seasons. Tang's on thin ice, missing tourney for the second straight year. Neptune is the same way, only about to miss his third--at Nova. Hurley has students screaming for him to be fired every ASU home game. Is Porter Moser safe, and if he is, then is he sick of not getting good NIL support and willing to listen to another school? The idea that the busy-ness of a spring coaching carousel should be determined by whether Terry is let go or not is ridiculous.

Lunardi has been higher on Texas than most bracketiwanians for much of the year.

Davis has a second place finish and a sweet sixteen appearance in three full seasons and could climb back into the tournament this year with a good showing in the ACC tournament (or a win at home over Duke, but that seems unlikely). There is only one senior to go with two freshmen, two sophomores, and three juniors in the top 7 guys in minutes played for UNC this year, and if Wilson stays with his commitment, then UNC would have a very strong incoming class. That could be a very good team next year.

Arkansas and OU are included on more brackets that updated after the weekend games, so it is more like we are the third to last right now. We seem to be a little ahead of the triumvirate of tOSU, WF, and Indiana, but don't sleep on Xavier. Xteam didn't do itself any favors by slumbering through the second half and barely beating an awful Seton Hall team, but it could win out and finish with 21 wins, including 11 wins over top 100 teams. It is just 1-9 in q1 games, but 3 of those were road games decided in OT or one possession against top 40 teams, and Freemantle missed 2 of those games. I remember Gerry saying weeks ago that 7-11 would probably get us there. I remember saying at the time we needed 8-10 without a bad loss in the conference tournament, so I think I'm in agreement with you, Bob. Our OOC SOS militates very much against us. The only thing that really militates for us at this point is the quality of our three good wins (Kentucky, Missouri, and A&M).

I don't know if the articles' writers really know anything about the Utah opening, but I find it interesting that many of them seem to think one of several NBA assistant coaches would be the way to go.